Walter Map and the Matter of Britain. Joshua Byron Smith
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reshaping the Welsh material they found for their own ends. In the thirteenth century, Walter Map, or at least the figure of Walter Map, became an Arthurian author precisely because he fit the profile: he was a clerical Latin writer with a strong interest in Wales and its past.
Chapter 1 examines Walter’s affiliations with Wales and with the genre of romance, providing important context for how Walter could be seen as someone who worked with the Matter of Britain. Walter took a special interest in Wales and the Welsh, and while these Welsh tales have generally been said to reflect common anti-Welsh stereotypes, they are often more sophisticated than has been assumed. They show that Walter viewed himself as somewhat of an expert on the Welsh; his stories display a relatively nuanced view of Anglo-Welsh politics. This chapter also argues that Walter was a skilled writer of romance. Distinctio 3 of the De nugis curialium contains four polished romances that demonstrate that Walter could write a series of thematically linked stories. While these romances are not set in ancient Britain, they nonetheless show that Walter had read widely in contemporary French literature and that he incorporates many elements of popular romance into his own work.
Chapters 2 and 3 concern the only surviving copy of the De nugis curialium found in Bodley 851. I argue that the De nugis curialium was originally five separate works in various stages of completion that were erroneously taken by later scribes to be a single work. Chapter 2 examines all of the doublets in the De nugis curialium, arguing that Walter was reusing earlier material in later work. This chapter does the meticulous work of comparing all of the doublets found in the De nugis curialium and finds that some of the tales in distinctiones 1 and 2 are indeed polished revisions of their counterparts found in distinctiones 4 and 5. Walter’s work is therefore not a messy collage of courtier notes. Rather, it is a collection of unfinished works, some of which are frozen in the act of revision. Chapter 3 argues that many of the text’s infelicities, which are often attributed to Walter himself, are the result of scribal interpolation. Overall, I suggest that Walter’s work is not as sloppy or “untidy” as earlier critics have assumed.
Chapter 4 examines in detail the process of revision that lies behind the tale of King Herla, one of Walter’s most celebrated tales. This tale is not in fact authentically Welsh, as is widely believed, but is rather a reworking of a continental tale, fitted into Welsh garb—a practice that I argue was widespread. Reworking tales to make them fit into the Matter of Britain could have very specific ideological effects. Walter, for example, has his own way of bringing Henry II into ancient Britain. This chapter also includes an overview of other medieval works that have been incorporated—some skillfully, some sloppily—into the Matter of Britain. Overall, I conclude by arguing that this phenomenon was commonplace in medieval literature and that many instances of Celtic narrative material may in fact be the invention of medieval authors.
Chapter 5 takes up the thorny question of the transmission of the Matter of Britain. How did so many Welsh, Cornish, and Breton characters, themes, and stories make their way into medieval French literature? Walter Map’s De nugis curialium provides a good deal of indirect evidence, as well as some direct evidence, that transmission occurred through written Latin documents, instead of itinerant multilingual minstrels, who are thought to be the usual channel for transmission. It also explicitly details a network of exchange among minor Marcher aristocrats, which Walter took advantage of to find material for his own work. Arguing that Latin clerics like Walter played a larger role in the transmission of the Matter of Britain than has previously been acknowledged, this chapter concludes by examining other instances in which Latin clerics were instrumental in moving narrative material out of Wales. In particular, this chapter argues that Walter obtained the sources for two of his Welsh tales from the monastic archive of St. Peter’s, Gloucester.
Chapter 6 reviews Walter Map’s reception in the thirteenth century and beyond, asking why so many readers and writers ascribed to him parts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. I argue that the earliest attributions to Walter, written only a decade after his death, do not portray him as the author or translator of any of these Arthurian romances. Instead, Walter is merely imagined as a clerk of Henry II who rummaged through monastic archives to compile the Latin source for the French romances. This image corresponds well to what we know about Walter Map and to our revised understanding of how Welsh material passed into the larger European world. Although Walter almost certainly had no hand in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, the author who first introduced him into the Cycle’s list of putative authors knew more about how legends of Arthur and his court circulated out of Wales than he has been given credit for.
Chapter 1
Walter Map, Wales, and Romance
Medieval readers appreciated knowing the pedigree of a story, and medieval authors obliged them, even if their explanations were often well-crafted fiction. It is no wonder then that the Lancelot-Grail Cycle insists that Master Walter Map played an integral role in writing, translating, or discovering these wondrous adventures about ancient Britain.1 But invoking a source, as the Cycle invokes Walter Map, could do more than satisfy the curiosity of readers; it could also perform important literary work. This chapter begins to ask what kind of literary work the name Walter Map might have accomplished for the Cycle’s author and its first readers. In doing so, it recovers Walter Map’s literary reputation, with particular attention to Wales and to the genre of romance. Both of these topics would be of special concern to writers and readers of the Cycle. Texts dealing with the pre-English, Arthurian past of Britain often established a plausible tie with the British past, usually through Wales or Brittany.2 Moreover, early romances tended to position themselves in a larger literary network, sometimes by claiming patronage and sometimes by claiming to be translations or adaptations of earlier romances. Part of the appeal of Walter’s name was that it evoked expertise in both the Welsh and romance. As Chapter 6 shows, these two aspects are not the only reasons that the Cycle claims Walter’s involvement, but they are a good place to begin the investigation.
Walter the Marcher
In November of 1203, Gerald of Wales faced the rather cruel task of nominating candidates to serve as the bishop of St. Davids, a position that he himself had just been denied. Gerald, however, had to follow one important qualification: the candidates must have been born in England, unlike Gerald himself.3 One of the two men he grudgingly suggested was Walter Map, the archdeacon of Oxford. Although Gerald and Walter had known one another for some years, perhaps even since their youth, Gerald was not merely doing a favor for an old friend; Walter was a strategic choice. Part of Gerald’s rhetoric for his own promotion had been that recent bishops of St. Davids, appointed by English kings and Canterbury, had been altogether ignorant of Welsh customs and could not speak Welsh. “We seek a doctor of souls,” Gerald wrote, “not a funeral attendant; we wish to have neither a mute dog, nor a speechless shepherd.”4 If they could not have a Welsh bishop who could preach in the language of their diocese, then Walter Map might be a suitable compromise. Not only was Walter witty, learned, and generous, but he was familiar with the Welsh and their customs, since he called the Anglo-Welsh border home.5 Conveniently for Gerald, Walter could also claim to have been born in England: while he could call the Welsh his compatriots, England was, in his own words, his mother. Had Gerald’s proposal been accepted instead of ignored, one wonders how Walter’s new diocese would have responded to his trenchant observations that “the glory of the Welsh lies in plunder and theft” and that the Welsh are “completely unfaithful